The present invention relates to a carriage lock apparatus which is advantageous in use in an optical disk apparatus, video disk player, compact disk player, and so on.
At the time of recording or playing back information on or from an optical disk for instance, the optical disk is rotated and a head, from which a laser beam is incident on the optical disk and through which a reflected (or transmitted) beam from the optical disk is transmitted to a photo detector, is moved in a direction of the radius of optical disk. By this movement, information can be recorded or played back on or from any track on the optical disk.
Accordingly, the head is needed to be kept in a movable state at the time of use in a radial direction of the optical disk. During nonuse times, however, if the head is movable, there is a possibility that it will collide with stoppers etc. and be damaged when an apparatus is shocked or let to accidentally fall. Therefore, generally, a carriage on which the head is mounted and which is movable in the radial direction is locked in an unmovable state at the time of nonuse.
In a conventional apparatus, the carriage is locked on a chassis by a shipping screw or by an engagement of a projection and a hole or notch which are formed on one and another of the chassis and carriage.
However, it takes a relatively long time to lock the carriage by the screw. Thus, such a system is disadvantageous when it is necessary to repeatingly lock and unlock the carriage. Furthermore, it can not be used to lock automatically.
Also, the lock method of engagement between a projection and notch limits a position for locking, namely the carriage is difficult to be locked in any radial position.